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Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2

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I just wonder what Harry Potter didn't have. Maybe I was to excited about seeing this movie. At an 'overall' level I was dis-hearted.
The movie didn't impress me with anything. Of course, it has all the magic stuff that the other parts had, but what the hell, it doesn't have the touch of a maestro. I just laughed at how stupid it looks when Ron kissed Hermione; I wanted maybe more, I wanted an epic and glossy kiss, and even if I'm not a real director, what I want from a movie is entertainment, something that this movie has not.
I don't know how a battle between wizards should look, but even Dragon Age has better mage fighting than Harry Potter. Nothing spectacular, just a great deja vu and expectancy. As a viewer, I want the the movie to keep me connected to the action, to make me feel that I don't want to leave the cinema until it ends. I think that the movie deserved a better acting, a better directing and a better created story. The movie has no pace.
I lived my adolescence with this series and more than anything I'm upset that the series ended. I loved the main characters Harry, Ron and Hermione and I'll always be their dedicated fan.
In this movie Harry Potter, the key character of the story is played by . Honestly, I'we seen him perform better along the series, but he's a grown up man now and he was only a child in other series. I don't know if he knew back in 2001 when he joined the series that he will earn £60 millions; now he knows it, and I further think that he will be very influenced by this amount of money throughout his career. I am eager to think that his acting career is the work of his mother, who is an casting agent.
Hermione Granger hasn't got the quality of what she has shown in previous movies. We are all used to her being a dork kid, who always has the answers, but she is decisive in escaping the Wizarding Bank Gringotts. However, Emma Watson is playing it plain and smooth, she is confident in her acting skills and she really induces strong feelings in others acting by her side. The series made her rich but with a modest sum of £10 milion, more than enough to get her up on high heels. This movie completed a milestone in Emma Watson carrer.
Ron Weasley, is one of the key characters in this last act. He surprises Hermione with his hidden wisdom and courage. However the two of them should have been more romantic in their only kiss, for it is decisive in opening the Chamber of Secrets for finding the basilik tooth. Rupert Grint is a strong actor, he also played in other movies while he played in Harry Potter, but that didn't stopped him from playing the role with all his hearth.
As an overview, I found the movie worth seeing only if you are a great fan and want to see the ending of the story. I was not an ignorant of the movie, for I have seen all parts at the time of their appearance and also I reviewed all of them before this one last part. So I wasn't introduced in the world of Harry Potter just now, but for a long time ago. I have to congratulate everybody for making the movie possible and for resolving the conflicts in it.
The director, David Yates, done a good job but he could have increased the pace a little, in order to make the movie more spectacular; in the same idea, the attack of Valdemort's adepts should have been a little more intense and the movie should have concentrated a lot more on the battles betwen Valdemort's troops and the wizards at the school. I don't think that the movie is a bad one, I only think that it lacks polishes in some aspects to make the audience less bored.
However, it is an epic end for the Harry Potter novel writen by J.K. Rowling. She really created an intense introduction in the fantastic world of wizards and spells. She created the world of wizards and she was involved in most of the scenes created by the studios. Great work everybody.

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Rio

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Entertainment is the key word of this movie.
Carlos Saldanha, Earl Richey Jones and Todd Jones created one perfect happy ending story. Even if kids are the targeted audience for this movie, I was expecting something different in comparison to Ice Age, or Robots but I received the same good jokes and good joy. I really like the work of Carlos Saldanha, he knows how to make animation become good work. He considers that the creation of the Rio animation was build around working hard and having hard fun. He likes creating movies for kids that are enjoyed by the grown ups too, so that both parents and kids to walk into the theater and have fun.
The Rio movie is created around a colorful skeet, you can see the color in characters and environment but also in music, because samba is a very specific dance that brings out the colors of Rio de Janeiro peoples during their famous festival. The scenario is build around rescuing the Azore Parrot species.
'Azore meaning blue'
Blue is the color of the sky. Often the sky means escape, but you can't escape into the sky if you don't know how to fly. So, our main character doesn't know how to fly, and keeps coming up with the explanation that ostriches don't fly; as a surprise to himself, he finds out at the end that he's not an ostrich and he can fly.
Jesse Eisenberg is the voice of the main character, Blu. He also stared in The Social Network as Mark Zuckerberg. He was really up to this interpretation. He considered playing Blu as being a cute and sweet character, raised in Minnesota and brought to Rio de Janeiro, fact that cused him such a huge change of culture. He was helped alot by the director, Carlos Saldanha, who is from Brazil. Also, during his interpretation, he felt the same emotions just like the character. So when Blu was put up to the flight situation, Jesse had to take part in playing the feelings of the bird, mostly after seeing what the animators had done in that specific scene.
The movie also contains lots of emotional breakthrough because of the relationship bounded between Blu and Linda and afterwards between Blu and Jewel. From here we can get to the other star of the movie, Anne Hathaway. She is also known for The Devil Wears Prada, Alice in Wonderland, and Love and other Drugs.
She stated:
'Singing has always been something that I've loved to do. I never thought about doing professionally; I always felt more drawn to acting. But, who knows? I mean, I’m doing things that I never, ever, ever thought I would do in front of a lot of people as well, and so anything is possible.'
The director Carlos Saldanha succeeds with this movie to bring out the fantasy and colors of Rio de Janiero culture. Most of the credit goes also to the animation crew who outdid themselves in bringing the idea of the movie on the big screen. They did such a great job.
In my opinion, this story wants to send more than just an adventure. As a parrot owner, I felt a strange feeling and an inner struggle that was convincing me to free my own pets. Most of this birds are caught by poachers and the way they are caught and the way they are sold it's very well described in the movie and makes you wonder if your pet had the same experience.
Altogether, the movie is excellent. Even as a grown up you will enjoy it. Even if your good mood is lost somewhere at work or at home, no problem amigos! This movie will bring it back to you in a jiffy.

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True Grit

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Revenge is one of the most common things which can be seen in action movies, and True Grit is among this type of movies. On top of all that, what should highly be appreciated is the fact that it tries to reinvent a genre.
The story is well built around the revenge of Mattie Ross. She is a stubborn girl who has enough money to hire a tough U.S. Marshal, who would help her track her father. At the beginning, Rooster Cogburn is not willing to accept her offer, but he accepts it eventually. The toughest part for the two of them is represented by the Indian Nations lands that are surrounded by "get back or die" signs. On their way, a bounty hunter, LaBoeuf, aids them in order to catch Tom Chaney, who is also the killer of Mattie's father. Their adventure is thrilling and has everything you want to see in a good western.
The movie is a remake of the one in 1969, which starred the famous John Wayne. The same role is now played by Jeff Bridges, who also starred in The Big Lebowski, Iron Man and TRON: Legacy. I think he was an inspired decision, because he really impersonates a "true grit" hero. Altogether, he is charming, he sounds like his mouth is full of marbles every time he speaks like a real all-day drunk man. After completing this movie he stated:

'I'm hoping this will revive the western'
The Coens make a good western display it contains everything for a success story. The remake of True Grit and the way they see it makes it exemplary. They created more intrigue making Rooster Cogburn one eye drunk man and they even make you sense the smell of his breath. All characters speak with formal diction; this is Coens' little joke that the formal talk merely decorates the savage moral incoherence of the west. You cannot see a 14 years old girl, adventuring on the Indian Territory to revenge her father as an everyday scenario. The Coens recreated the western: if in the beginning the westerns were only for good actors to get in shape, now they were replaced by romance comedy that are much more entertaining, where actors put their cowboy hats only to fool around. Just for reinventing the western and bringing it to a new threshold, this movie must be seen.
Mattie is interpreted by Haille Steinfeld - she is good at impersonating a fourteen-year-old girl in pigtails, who is stubborn and desperately wants to revenge her father's death. Mattie is the kind of character that can really impress you. This makes her one of the characters that must be watched in this movie.
One thing I didn't like about the movie in general (I have nothing personal with it though, is the role of LaBoeuf, who I consider being there when he shouldn't be. I didn't react as his decisions; he didn't impress me with his intelligence or his skills. And Matt Damon doesn't even fit in the character's skin. My personal point of view is that he is intended to be the annoying part of the movie.
However when I went to the cinema, in its early penning days the movie theater was empty so I would rather think that the western is not so well appreciated by the movie communities. All in all, as a genre lover, I recommend this movie to everyone who wants to see it.





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Memento

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A movie that keeps you awake and wondering for days. The short-term memory loss was exploited in many movies, but Memento is by far one of the best. Christopher Nolan, also known for directing Inception, The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, exploits the illness of his main character, Leonard Shelby, in a proper way.
The rewind effect of the movie is strange at first and makes you feel like you will never understand the movie as a whole. It's a movie that has no storytelling, for you can't retell it from the beginning to the end, but from the end to the beginning. As the main story line, Leonard Shelby looks for the killer and rapist of his wife, in order to revenge her. In the wake of the events, the movie begins with his revenge, but as the movie progresses, you can actually see that Leonard is only a tool for other people's murders and revenges. He creates a sort of puzzle by taking pictures of the persons he meets and taking notes of their character as he gets to know them. In fact, at the end of the movie, you remain with a big doubt if he really killed the right person.
Guy Pearce is the lead role in this story and he does it right. Everything he does is in his way of thinking the movie. He really perfectly impersonates a short-term memory loss illness person. The way he handles the transition scenes, when he forgets what he talks about, and the desperation he shows when he really need to note something down, it makes you feel pity for the main character.
I liked how Leonard Shelby organizes things in order to find what he seeks. He also creates a perfect puzzle and seems in doubt about his own feelings in his early search. However, he decides to kill the one who raped his wife.
Christopher Nolan has received an Oscar nomination for this movie. He makes the narrative structure of this movie run in reverse with small flashback sequences. The film's events unfold in two separate, alternating narratives, one in color and the other in black and white. The black-and-white sections are told in chronological order and the color sequences are in reverse order. The director induces the audience into the same confusion as the main character. At the same time, medical experts have cited Memento as one of the most realistic and accurate depictions of anterograde amnesia. So, the director did a great job with this movie! Also, he directed Inception, another movie that resemble in genre with the same type of psychological turn of events.
After watching the movie I tried and wanted to see if I had a short-term memory loss; it's hard to see things backwards but it's worth trying, it's like you will have control upon the future.
Watching this movie can get interesting; however, you need to watch it twice to really understand it. Memento really rises itself at the same level of a high budget movie.